When paying the cashier in a store or restaurant, you’ll probably be asked a question or two. Here are 8 typical questions often heard in Québec, to help you be better prepared.

1. Avez-vous la carte de points?Do you have the points card? Different stores have different names for their points card. At Pharmaprix, for example, it’s called la carte Optimum. Avez-vous la carte Optimum?

2. Voulez-vous la facture?Do you want the receipt? At fast food restaurants, many customers don’t want the receipt, so cashiers have a habit of asking if you want it. In Montréal, the receipt is most often called une facture, and much more rarely un reçu.

3. Voulez-vous un sac?Do you want a bag? Because many stores are now in the practice of charging their customers for plastic bags, you may be asked if you want one.

5. C’est pour ici ou pour emporter?Is it for here or to go? You can answer this question with pour ici(for here) or pour emporter(to go). Other times, the question might be asked as c’est pour ici? or c’est pour manger ici?, in which case you can answer with either oui or non, (c’est) pour emporter.

6. Voulez-vous un cabaret?Do you want a tray? If you’ve ordered food, you might be asked if you want a tray to carry it on. In Montréal, a tray is most often called un cabaret. You might also hear it called un plateau, but this term is more likely to be used by francophones who aren’t from Québec.

7. Voulez-vous un cabaret de transport?Do you want a coffee tray / a tray for the drinks? This is a smaller kind of tray, usually made of cardboard, used for carrying take-away cups of coffee or other drinks. There’s an image of a cabaret de transport here. In that same post, you’ll also discover (or review) what coffee cup sleeves are called in French, in case you want to ask for one.

8. Avez-vous dix sous?Have you got a dime? When paying a cashier, you might be asked for five cents (cinq sous, cinq cennes), ten cents (dix sous, dix cennes) or twenty-five cents (vingt-cinq sous, vingt-cinq cennes) to facilitate making your change. For example, if you owe 4,10 $ (quatre et dix) and you pay with a five-dollar bill, you might be asked for ten cents (avez-vous dix sous?) so that your change will consist simply of a one-dollar coin (une piasse, in colloquial language), rather than a number of coins totalling 90 cents.

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Get caught up: The OffQc book 1000 Québécois French is a condensed version of all the language that appeared in the first 1000 posts on OffQc. You can buy and download it here.

I thought this was interesting: McDonalds has a new dish — smoked meat poutine in English, or poutine au smoked meat in French. (See screenshots below.) Both terms are half English, half French, using the same words.

French version:

English version:

What’s also interesting is the use of italics in the French version’s description (and lack thereof in the English version), which tells us something interesting about how speakers of each language view borrowed words.

In the French version’s description (click on the image to read it; it’s in the blue section), smoked meat is in italics because the term comes from English. Bouffe, meaning food, is also in italics because it’s an informal usage.

When you go to the English version’s description, maybe you’d likewise expect poutine to be in italics because it comes from French — except it’s not. It’s treated like any other English word.

The use of italics on smoked meat in French isn’t really surprising — words borrowed from English are frequently put in italics. But this does tell us something important about how words borrowed from English are viewed. By using italics, we’re being reminded that such words fall outside of what’s considered to be “French.”

It’s as if the author or translator is saying to readers, “yes, this is the way it’s said — smoked meat — but we probably shouldn’t say it that way, so we’ll need italics here to signal that.”

What about the italics on bouffe? Italics here are more surprising. Bouffe is a French word — informal, yes, but not borrowed from English. Bouffe and smoked meat, though, get the same treatment: italics. This tells us something as well about how informal words are viewed, at least by the author or translator of this text. If bouffe was put in italics, we can probably assume that words like pogner, capoter, niaiser, etc., would’ve been as well, had they been used.

The English version doesn’t use any italics in the description. In fact, it would seem downright odd to see poutine put in italics in the English version, wouldn’t it?

As for informal words, there aren’t any in the English text equivalent to bouffe, but let’s imagine for a minute that an informal word really had been used: yummy, let’s say. If this word had been used, do you think it would’ve been put in italics?

— Welcome to McDonalds!— Hi, I’ll take an ice cream cone.— Anything else?— Yes, a caramel sundae.— Next?— An Oreo McFlurry.— What size?— Snack size.*— Anything else?— Yes, the Quarter pounder with cheese combo.— What drink?— A coke. Oh, and I’ll also take a Chicken McNuggets Happy Meal, and two CBO combos.— Next?— That’s it.— Is it to go?— It’s for here!— Forty dollars. (…) Bon appétit!— Thanks. (…) Oh, can I just get some ketchup, please?— It’s just over there, next to the drinks.— Perfect, thanks.— Have a good day.

*You can also say cheeseburger, of course. CBO is pronounced cé-bé-ô. The small McFlurry size is called collation; the large McFlurry size is called classique.

The guy had just ordered ice cream in a cup (une coupe). Just as it was given to him, this was how he asked for a spoon and another cup — maybe to share with someone.

The image is of a McDonalds style coupe glacée or sundae. The sun part of sundae sounds like sonne; the dae part sounds like dé. If you want a chocolate one, add au chocolat to the term; if you want a caramel one, add au caramel.

You might be asked what size for certain items: Quel format? Some items have special names for sizes (collation, classique, etc.) so look at the overhead screens for the words. Otherwise, you can probably get away with petit, moyen, grand in many situations.

Pis from the quote above sounds like the English word pee, or as if it were written pi in French. It’s a contraction of puis, and it just means and here. If you want to hear it, search for this in Google: site:offqc.com/listen pis and all the videos in the Listen to Québécois French section where it’s used will appear in the results.

At a different restaurant, I was reminded of another way sometimes used to order food when I heard a woman say:

Donne-moé don’ […].

For example, donne-moé don’ un muffin. This is good to know if you’re working the cash and serving francophones. Donne-moé is a colloquial variation on donne-moi.Don’ is in fact donc, but the c isn’t pronounced.

You may remember I’ve mentioned before that nobody expects a learner or non-native speaker to say moé. I usually even discourage it — not because moé is wrong, of course, but because a learner’s use of it may strike some native-speakers as bizarre or even comical.

As a learner, you can go with some of the ways in #1015 instead; the easiest way is to just say the item followed by s’il vous plaît, for example: Bonjour, le trio Big Mac, s’il vous plaît. (Un trio is what a meal is called at McDonalds, i.e., a combo.)

I’m always on the lookout for good sources of vocab and expressions for you to learn, and I’ve found a pretty good one for learning how people complain and insult others in French:

Comments that appear on paid ads in your Facebook feed.

The bigger the company, the more likely you are to find complaints and juicy insults, either directed at the company itself or other commenters. The comments are also very good for learning all kinds of useful French vocab and expressions in general.

For example, if you want to know how people complain in French about coffee that tastes like dirty dishwater, check out the comments on a Tim Hortons ad.

If you want to know how people accuse a restaurant of serving fake meat, then take a peek at the comments on an ad from McDonalds. You won’t be disappointed.

There’s an ad that’s been appearing in my Facebook feed for many weeks now. The company isn’t a big one — it’s from a butcher located south of Montréal — so a lot of the comments on it are a little more tame compared to the ones on, say, an ad from Tim Hortons.

The guy’s been advertising that he’s got a lot of steaks to get rid of because of an ordering error made by a client. To sell the steaks as fast as possible, he explains in his ad that he’s selling them with no mark-up in price just to break even.

The comments on his advert range from praise over the quality of the meat to accusations that he’s a scammer just looking to sell more steaks with a bogus story.

Many commenters wanted to know practical information, like what time he opens and if he delivers:

Faites-vous la livraison?Do you deliver?

À quelle heure vous ouvrez?What time do you open?

À quelle heure ouvrez-vous aujourd’hui?What time do you open today?

One commenter said that when the ads first started appearing on Facebook, he was interested in buying some of the steaks. But now that the ad has been running for so long, he smells a scam:

I was interested at first, but this is starting to smell like a scam. Sorry, I’ll take a pass.

The standard word for scam in French is une arnaque. The commenter could have also written ça commence à sentir l’arnaque.

The person who does the scamming is called un arnaqueur. The next commenter used the word arnaqueur when he said that people were getting the impression the butcher was a scammer because of how long the ad and his sob story have been running:

You should end this paid advertisement; it’s hurting you [i.e., your reputation]. Look at people’s comments. They don’t appreciate this kind of ad on Facebook. You come across as a scammer.

The word for advertisement in French is une publicité, but you’ll often come across the informally shortened form une pub. It’s similar to how “advertisement” in English shortens to “ad” and “advert” more informally.

The commenter also used the expression passer pour un arnaqueur. He said: tu passes pour un arnaqueur (you come across as a scammer). You can replace un arnaqueur with other nouns, for example: tu passes pour un con (you come across as a shithead).

And, in fact, our next commenter used the noun con when he came to the butcher’s defence by attacking other commenters:

Chiâler in Québec — we’ve seen it before, like here in entry #808 — means “to complain.” And someone who does the complaining can be described as chiâleux. Other ways to translate con in the sense used in the comment include: idiot, moron, ass, dickhead.

Those Facebook ads can be annoying, but if you change your perspective and see them as a language-learning opportunity, you might find you don’t mind them as much… or at least I don’t — they give me ideas for OffQc!

You know those sponsored ads that show up in your Facebook feed (do I even need to ask)? I’ve pulled seven comments left on those ads by other people for us to look at. Might as well turn those ads into something we can learn from.

I haven’t changed any of the words; the only changes I’ve made are to spelling and punctuation, or I may have included only part of a comment if it was long.

1. On an ad from Zoosk, an online dating site, we find this comment:

C’est d’la marde, ça.
This is shit. It’s garbage.

You’ll hear shit called marde very frequently in Québec!

If it’s crap, c’est d’la marde.

2. On an ad for a 5 km run from Color Vibe, held in different countries around the world, a Facebook user who wanted to participate named a friend in a comment and asked her:

T’es-tu down?
You down? You game?
Do you wanna go?
Do you wanna do this?

We’ve seen in other posts on OffQc that down can be used in the sense of feeling down (depressed). Chu down depuis hier, I’ve been (feeling) down since yesterday. Y’a pogné un down, he’s (feeling) down.

In this Facebook example, down means “to be willing” or “to be up for it” or, like the other informal québécois word that’s been coming up on OffQc lately, game.

T’es-tu game? T’es-tu down?
T’es-tu down pour demain?

This question uses the informal yes-no tu in it. The part that means “you” in this question is the t’. The tu is the part that signals to us that it’s a yes-no question.

3. Then there was this comment on an ad from CarrXpert promoting their body shop repairs:

The word job in Québécois French is usually a feminine word in colloquial conversations. Job can refer to employment (for example: j’ai lâché ma job, I quit my job), but not in this example: here, it’s used in the sense of work that was carried out on a car.

4. On an ad from Keurig (they make single-serving coffee brewers that use small disposable cups), a commenter points out the negative effects of their coffee brewer on the environment:

The French word gang as used in Québec sounds much like its English equivalent. It’s a feminine noun. It can mean “gang” just like in English (like a street gang), but it’s even more often used in the general sense of a bunch of people — nothing to do with crime.

Ma gang de bureau, my friends from the office, my office group. Gang de caves! Bunch of idiots! Toute la gang est invitée, the whole gang is invited, all you guys are invited.

C’est du pink slime.

5. In a McDonald’s ad for the quart de livre (quarter pounder) showing an image of a horribly pink, uncooked hamburger patty being weighed on scale (to prove it really does weigh a quarter pound), we find this comment: